Customer Comments

Our customers love SoftRAID and the support we give them. We're confident that you will too!

That's why we let you use SoftRAID for free for 30 days to see how powerful it is. Just download the current version and start using SoftRAID's incredible features. If you decide to purchase, we'll send you a serial number so you can continue to use it.

Here is what our customers say about SoftRAID:

Had issues after upgrading from 5.6.7 to 5.7.3, submitted a request for help and Mark James provided quick response and excellent service to resolve the problems.

Mark Enersen
February 2019

Delighted to see my experience is far from unique! Looks like SoftRaid gets the Nobel Prize for 4.99 Star average! Sure get my vote. Nothing like having support that responds like you’re family! By far best experience in my decades of computing. In a universe by ourselves!

B Dudney, M.D
January 2019

I wish more companies would take note of how support should be run. Mark offered near immediate response, addressing all my questions in plain to understand English. I wish more companies would take note of how support should be run. Thanks SoftRAID!

Barrett Ross
Infinite Skye Creative, Inc.
December 2018

The new version has performed flawlessly! I was just thinking about you guys today and how reliable the software is interacting with my MacBook Pro. I did have some trouble at first but you guys got me back up and running and at the time it honestly seemed like magic.

Chad Jones
December 2018

Have been using SoftRAID Version 5(.x) since around 2014 with external (Thunderbolt) OWC RAID arrays. Perhaps the best thing I can say is that since then, except for replacing drives from time to time as needed, I've barely thought about SoftRAID, everything has just worked.

But what prompted me to post this review tonight was how quick/helpful/friendly tech support was late today (Friday) helping with recovering a volume. My initial email was answered within a few minutes and after maybe 5-6 back and forths (mostly waiting for me as I was also working on something else), everything was wrapped up about 2 hours later.

I was a little surprised at the quick response, but realized then I had used support once before for some type of recovery situation (and questions) and had a similar experience. While I'm sure there are plenty of issues that just don't lend themselves to quick/same-day resolution like this, my (admittedly limited) experience with the tech support folks has been great, nice folks.

Jon C
September 2018

I’ve been using SoftRAID since 2015. Initially I created a 20TB HDD
enclosure with 4 Toshiba 5GB HDDs in an OWC Thunderbay and got the OEM
SoftRAID with it. I made a RAID 5 out of them and they serve me
faithfully. When one drive started failing, for days I was getting
SoftRAID SMART warnings, got a new drive of the same kind on Amazon,
replaced the failing one and rebuilt the volume just fine.

The other arrays were SSD-based, in OWC Thundebay mini enclosures at
first. I’ve built 3 over the years. The issues were tricky and I emailed
Mark at once, and we solved everything well and thoroughly. The first one
was when I bought 4 Mushkin SSDs, 2TB each, and the volume was failing. It
proved to be an electrical problem where 4 drives of that type were
consuming too much power — I got a Samsung one, replacing one of the
Mushkins, and the volume was fine. In the process, Mark was super helpful,
as failure was mysterious and could have been hardware or software or
cables or what not.

I also replaced an old Mac mini HDD with two SSDs and mirrored them with
SoftRAID. When High Sierra came and made that setup unupgradable, I worked
with Mark to update from an external drive.

The next set of failures came with an upgrade to iMac Pro with Thunderbolt
3. My good old chain of 4 TB2 OWC RAID 5 volumes got connected to it via a
TB2/3 adapter, and I also got a new Akitio TB3 mini enclosure and built
another SSD-based RAID 5 in it. I upgraded the OWC-only SoftRAID XT, as it
was now called, to full-featured version, handle any enclosures, like
Akitio. Things worked great.

Then, on the iMac Pro, I started seeing disk ejections — drives in volumes
were disappearing. Mark confirmed it was an Apple bug haunting him for
years. After a while they stopped as suddenly as they appeared. But not
for long.

The worst moment came when three SSD drives in an OWC mini enclosure
suddenly failed together. Any attempt to mount that enclosure then hung
the machine. I tested with iMac Pro, Mac mini, and both were hanging upon
mounting the wedged volume. I resorted to an older Air without SoftRAID,
which mounted it as a RAID 5 Limited — and Mark confirmed Mac OSX licensed
SoftRAID in all installations in a limited capacity. I was able to recover
the data and then certified the drives as OK, and rebuilt the volume, as a
RAID 1+0 now. The failure was most likely due to the wedged state of the
drives after ejections. Mark said that APFS will protect from that
problem, and I’ll be sharing ejection diagnostics should it occur again to
send to Apple.

While I was fretting over the OWC mini failing, I got yet another Akitio
mini enclosure and built a SoftRAID 5 on it, now that the Micron 2TB SSDs
appeared at half price compared to the ones I used in the previous
volumes. Everything is working well.

The critical 3-drive failure vexed me over a weekend. I couldn't;'t stop
until I got back my setup, and I was emailing Mark every finding. He
emailed back Friday night, answer them all, and continued Saturday and
Sunday. Mark replied to every single question or concern, provided
specific steps to test or fix problems, and assessed every idea with deep
and actionable insights.

Overall, I cannot emphasize how confident I am in SoftRAID because of
Mark’s support and how comfortable I am to use this stellar product.

Dr. Alexy Khrabrov
San Francisco Bay Area
August 2018

Mark James has always been very quick to respond. In addition, whether the problem is just a quick question or a much more detailed bug type case, he is always able to give you a clear concise answer or narrow the scope quickly and get to a solution. He has always been very aware of the need to protect your data as is very critical when dealing with this type of environment. The product has always worked well for me and "just works" - really well.

Larry Thomas
August 2018

As another customer said, if I could give Mark 10 stars out of 5, I would. An issue that appeared a couple of months after setting up my Thunderbay 4 with SoftRAID XT on a new iMac Pro, which was a result of an update to MacOS High Sierra, seemed to have no resolution, but Mark stayed with me, days and weekends, until he was able to provide me with a solution, using Terminal, that worked! I am truly grateful!

Nick DiToro
July 2018

I would give Mark and SoftRaid 10 out of 5 stars if I could.

I have been using SoftRaid for two years and while I almost forget about it at times, it just saved me tremendously. Mark trouble shoot some potential reasons for a failing drive, and tests to complete to ensure it was not an anomaly with the new Operating System upgrade on my iMac.
And because of SoftRaid, I have just flipped out my destroyed drive for a new one and lost nothing.
THANKS!
10/10 would recommend!

Cal Pinkney
May 2018

SoftRAID Support is beyond excellent!

A late night email over the weekend for help produced a response 5 minutes later!! By comparison, I just dealt with AppleSupport on a dead iMac Pro and the 30+ day experience was dreadful. Apple needs to give SoftRAID some of that cash reserve in exchange for some consultation to them on how they can reproduce the awesome SoftRAID support experience!

Greg Lockhart
April 2018

I highly commend Mark James and the staff of SoftRAID.

I unfortunately suffered a hard failure of one of the disks in my array plus an OS-soft failure of a second drive at the same time. Yet Mark was able to diligently help me through using numerous emails, always responding very quickly. He expertly and efficiently helped me each step of the way recover priceless data.

Without Mark's help 18TB and 12 years of family photos and movies - dear friends, pets and family members whom have left us - would have been lost forever. As I type this I am fondly watching some thought-to-have-been-lost-forever footage, it is a bittersweet and perfect experience to see them once again.

Sterling
March 2018

I strongly recommend SoftRAID. I recently purchased a state-of-the art OWC Thunderbolt 3 RAID enclosure and 4 brand new 12TB Western Digital Enterprise drives. Having experienced 15-20 years of flawless performance from both OWC and Western Digital products I was frustrated when SoftRAID alarmed shortly after initial configuration. My inclination was to blame the software given my apparently misguided trust in WD disks. It turns out that one of the 12TB disks arrived with a significant number of BAD sectors directly from the factory. I would not have known had SoftRAID not warned me. If I had connected it directly to the IMac Pro it would have probably worked fine for a while--long enough to back everything up, only to fail unexpectedly down the road.

SoftRAID is worth the investment and it does what it says. Think for a moment about buying $2200 worth of disk drives that are failing out of the box and the value of the data that you are storing on it. It tells you what you NEED to know even if you may not WANT to hear it. The tech support response was immediate, effective and patient while working to get me to understand what the problem was. Now I just have to wait the 5 days for the new drive .. but far better than waiting 5 days rebuilding a large crashed volume.

Joe Havrilla
March 2018

Mark at SoftRAID support is amazing!

He always answers in a very timely manner, and his gives very clear and specific instructions on how to solve the problem. Mark has saved me (my RAID array) twice in the past 6 months, and in both cases, he was patient and walked me through the solution.

I've worked with lots of tech support (for various things) in the past, and SoftRAID's support is the best. Thank you for all your help!

Matt Turner
February 2018

I'm very happy with SoftRAID. It offers an excellent user interface and flawless performance.

Lightspeed support on a Sunday evening included. Thanks for the good work!

Thorsten Stocksmeier
February 2018

When I first bought my 2015 Mac Pro, I also bought a 4 bay Thunderbolt raid system from Macsales which came with SoftRAID installed on it.

A number of the Mac Pros had an issue, where the Thunderbolt lane would 'lose connection' for a few milliseconds, enough to screw up the RAID if you happened to be writing to it at the time.

Apple at first insisted I was crazy. Calls to MacSales, and then SoftRAID, revealed this was a real issue for some machines. SoftRAID told me they had uncovered 100 issues of this happening out of thousands of Mac Pros. After threatening a lawsuit with Apple, for an $8K system that did not perform as warranted, Apple started listening

SoftRAID stepped in, and I ended up getting a completely new 6 core Mac Pro, a 24 TB HGST Helium Thunderbolt RAID system. My system was sent to SoftRAID and I noticed a while later that SoftRAID had pinpointed the problem on the Thunderbolt lane, and a patch was written [by Apple] to correct the momentary drop outs.

What other company would bother to do all that work? I now have two 4 bay RAID systems with SoftRAID on them... GREAT company... Too many companies, Apple included, are taking the attitude of 'We got your money, now go away and leave us alone.'

It was only the pressure of SoftRAID (and MacSales) that got Apple to do something about the situation.

I use SOFTRAID 5 and have not had any issues what so ever. Great company

Mark Styles
Pliant Tunes BMI
November 2017

I contacted tech support after receiving an error message. The reply from Mark was prompt, clear and very helpful. I was lucky in this case and seem to be back up and running without having to replace a drive.

Bravo for support that is well above average!

Michael Matthews
November 2017

We had a problem with our RAID and Mark [SoftRAID support] figured out the problem and told us exactly what to do. Very happy with SoftRAID

Craig Satterlee
September 2017

I love this software. It works great. Also, the customer service is very fast and high level. My 4-star rating would be upgraded to 5-star if there was a RAID-6 option.

Karl Rittger
NSIDC
August 2017

SoftRAID replies: Hi Karl! RAID 6 will be available with SoftRAID 6, due out early next year, with complete support for APFS and various other new features.

Despite the fact I struggle with an old Mac Pro (3,1) and seem to be stuck on OS 10.11, I am impressed that SoftRAID seem to give a service second to none.

I hope I never have a disaster where I need to rely on you guys, but reading this article proves I have made the right choice.

A big pet on the back from a loyal customer. All the best and greetings from Amsterdam. Cheers,

Jeroen
August 2017

We have used SoftRAID for over a year now. We use it with a Thunderbolt drive bay caddy by StarTech. We have 4 drives in a RAID 10. This software is set up extremely easy to use and has been 100% reliable. This runs on a MacPro that runs a database for us and these drive get heavily accessed. SoftRAID has been flawless. Highly recommend.

Shawn Martin
ROG Computing Technologies
July 2017

SoftRaid is remarkable for two reasons. First, their product is rock solid, fast and very flexible. I have been a user now for more than a year, and I am very happy with the product. Second, their customer support is truly remarkable. Most of their support is provided via email, and it's very fast and helpful. I don't know how they do it, but it appears to me that they never close. I always get high quality, helpful support at night, on weekends ... just about any time. SoftRaid is a role model for all software companies.

John Sternbergh
John Sternbergh Photography
July 2017

I've been running SoftRAID quite happily for a few years now without a glitch... until this past week, when a I received dire warnings from SoftRAID about an imminent hard drive fail on my 4 drive Raid 5 configured 9TB external storage. I knew that meant I needed to get a new drive swapped in asap so that the rebuild could occur.

Unfortunately, I ran into some snags trying to get the remaining 3 disks back in sync and mounted, and when I couldn't find a step-by-step that spoke to the situations I was encountering at 9pm one evening, I figured, well, I might as well write tech support and hopefully, I hear back before things get worse. I HEARD BACK IN 10 MINUTES!!! I was floored.

We had a back a few back-and-forths, with me trying a few different suggestions, tweaking some settings and rushing out the next day to buy a new drive... and on Mark's advice, a backup drive so that once I got the remaining drives mounted (it took a few different tries) I could back the data up before starting the rebuild.

While I'm technically proficient, I'm no expert and the step-by-step support, including a link to a helpful video and recommendations to update my version of Disk Warrior all proved super helpful and I'm happy to say, I'm not only back up and running but I'm more confident than ever about running SoftRAID! You should be too! I've never experienced on-point and timely tech support like this ever, and I've experienced a lot of tech support over the years. Thank you!

Manny Kivowitz
KSK Studios
July 2017

SoftRaid is remarkable for two reasons. First, their product is rock solid, fast and very flexible. I have been a user now for more than a year, and I am very happy with the product. Second, their customer support is truly remarkable. Most of their support is provided via email, and it's very fast and helpful. I don't know how they do it, but it appears to me that they never close. I always get high quality, helpful support at night, on weekends ... just about any time. SoftRaid is a role model for all software companies.

John Sternbergh
John Sternbergh Photography
July 2017

SoftRAID is the only company I have ever dealt with that would responded to a tech support question on July 4th. I had did an upgrade and the license number didn't come across properly. I sent an email in the AM of July 4th, expecting to here back by the 5th. Nope, I got an email on the 4th, the link provided a updated file for SoftRAID Lite and my problem was solved.

I highly recommend SoftRAID to anyone needing RAID capabilities on a Mac.

Ives Potrafka
July 2017

Once again Mark came through—this time with a double whammy. I had two drives fail at the same time, one in a Raid 5 config and another in a RAID 1+0 config. My serial e-sata PCIE board was not responding and it looked like it failed—with 20 drives attached.

However, this was not the case. After moving some drives around, I noted the two drive failures. It was good test of Softraid. I pulled the bad drives and everything came back, albeit with some repair work needed.

I contacted Mark a number of times and he walked me through restoring my system and RAIDs. Once again he proved that his understanding of these systems extends well beyond his knowledge of "his" software. Perhaps his best Softraid tip — if you need to rebuild some volumes, "optimize" the volumes for workstation use. Mine are all optimized for video and it was taking "forever."

Thanks for Mark and the Softraid team for once again keeping my data (and me) straight.

Michael Oates
302 Stories, inc.
June 2017

There are programs that you use for a while and then discard, and then there are programs that you rely on every day.

SoftRAID obviously falls into the second. For those programs, you don't care just that the program works, but also that it continues to work—as Apple changes things, introduces new hardware, and constantly changes the ground out from under hard-working developers.

SoftRAID fits all these criteria.

First, it works. It works well, is completely reliable, and approaches the absolute speed that one could expect from a RAID (at least for spinning media, which is the only use I have for it).

Second, it is easy to use. Its user interface is so much easier to understand than Apple's Disk Utility, and it has a number of features that make it much less likely that you will do the dread operation of formatting a disk that you are currently using.

Third, it is kept up to date. You can read the release notes with each edition and you can see exactly what are the bugs fixed, the features added, and the things cleaned up. Most companies try to get away with "We made it better, upgrade" (I'm talking about you, Adobe). SoftRAID actually tells you what wasn't perfect, and how they have fixed it.

As a user who has found two bugs in SoftRAID, I think that they have the best, most proactive system for fixing bugs that I know. Many companies don't respond, or won't acknowledge the bugs, or take a long time (or forever) to fix them. SoftRAID actually goes out of its way to make its software as bullet proof as possible, on a timely basis. And is open with the customer as they deal with the inevitable bugs that slip into their software.

Alan Harper
June 2017

I've been a SoftRAID customer since back in 2005. In 12 years, I've never been more satisfied with any other software or hardware than I have been with SoftRAID. In the world of the "It just works" Macintosh ethos, SoftRAID just works.

Even when it was available, I never thought once about using Apple's Hardware RAID nor any of the other myriad hardware and software solutions.

Even today, when I am rebuilding/migrating my workstation to a new machine, SoftRAID support came to my rescue. I couldn't find my serial number nor the purchase email(s). One quick email to SoftRAID support and I received the details of my purchase and my serial number. ON A SATURDAY!!!!! Unheard of anywhere else.

If you need a RAID solution, look no further than SoftRAID. Outstanding software, outstanding customer support. As I told them today, I'm a customer for life.

Don Fuller
June 2017

I sent an email to support at midnight on a Saturday on the Memorial Day Weekend. Mark replied with a preliminary analysis within 15 minutes..

Never ever had this from any company ever.....!
While the problem is not yet solved, the preliminary messaging was very helpful

Great company.

Clement Singarajah
May 2017

By far the best CS help around. Wow - your support was just awesome!!! I can't believe how quick you got back to me. Thank you so much!!!!!

John McCabe
March 2017

Once again Mark came through, demonstrating not only his knowledge of SoftRAID, but an understanding of the unique and sometimes frustrating intricacies of the evolving Apple OS.

The learning? If you add a USB 3.0 PCIe card to your Mac Pro desktop machine, be aware that you will not be able to hook a start-up disk to that connection. You must use one of the ports that originally came with the machine--Firewire(s) or USB 2.0. I had been trying boot my machine from an external OS drive connected to one of my newer and faster ports---no way.

Mark assessed the problem and I'm up and running again--thanks SoftRAID for another insight into Apple's obscure idiosyncrasies.

Mike Oates
302 Stories, Inc.
March 2017

I want to thank your team for the work you do.

I own two very large OWC ThunderBays and both are setup with software RAID 5 using SoftRAID.

I've had no problems in the 2.5 years I've used your product and really appreciate the frequent updates.

Steven M
February 2017

SoftRAID v5 has been a big help in keeping a healthy RAID-0 for visual fx work. I followed the advice to replace a failing drive, and haven't had any problems since then.

I've also had my fair share of support questions answered promptly by Mark, who is helpful and clear in his recommendations. At no fault of SoftRAID's, the only feature I'm hoping for is that MacDrive will recognize a SoftRAID array, so I can easily work back-and-forth between OSX and Windows Boot Camp.

Thanks for keeping an eye on my RAID, so I can concentrate on my work.

Eric Levy
February 2017

Trying to solve an Apple system problem, SoftRaid support was much more helpful than AppleCare Professional Support.

Robert George
February 2017

I have 3 RAID devices attached to my Mac Mini.

A Drobo 5D, an OWC 4 disk Thunderbolt chassis and a cheap third party USB 3
4 disk chassis.

The Drobo is great, very flexible but very expensive.

The OWC and the Third party chassis are converted into near Drobo capability
but at a fraction of the cost.

I have had drive failures prewired on both Drobo and my 2 SoftRAID chassis
and the rebuild, performance, warning etc. was almost identical in
experience.

Overall I am very happy with SoftRAID, it gives me a lot more options than
Drobo and really does not tax my Mac Mini at all.

Last point and this is an important one, support from SoftRAID has been
absolutely excellent, fast and even on a Sunday.

HIGHLY recommended.

Robin Jackson
February 2017

We are a small advertising company.

I perform Mac systems
administration quite incidentally to my regular duties here—which of course
is nothing unique in the Apple environment. Familiar to many a reader,
then, will be the circumstance that matters of quality in wares themselves,
in user guidance, and especially in technical support take on heightened
significance to me.

I don't do this stuff all the time or even natively, so
take note: On account of availability alone, SoftRAID technical support far
exceeds expectations, but that's not all. The support I have received from
SoftRAID's highly competent personnel is roundly superior not only for being
so available but for its expertise, tenacity, and—significantly for me, one
might understand—patience.

All of this comes as considerable reassurance
given SoftRAID's fundamental role in the operation of computers for which I
am responsible. In the end, it comes down to user—not admin—experience,
though, and I can say without equivocation that my users have had zero
occasion to be aware even of SoftRAID's existence much less what it does for
them. Software being excellent, though, is no guarantee as to quality of
support. Here I can say, support is no let-down. It's every bit
as good as the engineering of this very fine product as indeed it would have
to be for someone in my shoes to be so satisfied.

I strongly recommend
SoftRAID inclusively for the quality of its technical support.

Graham Young
Sales Up, Inc.
February 2017

The SoftRAID software is great and does exactly what you would want
and expect. What really makes this product exceptional is the support that
you get, something which would easily cost >= the purchase price if you
sought to purchase the support alone from some kind of computer
professionals.

Whenever an issue has arisen, SoftRAID has been immediately
available, responding within hours to emails and giving detailed replies and
suggestions.

If you are serious about data integrity, you really do need to
understand pretty well what is going on with your storage systems (from both
a hardware and software perspective). The softRAID support has been
invaluable not just in helping to resolve issues that come up but in
answering my questions so I can understand what happened, why, and how to
proceed in more informed ways going forward.

Michael Ohlrogge
Stanford University
February 2017

Not all of us run from a Mac Pro. Data for MacBook Pros (2015) would
be nice. Mac OS 10.11.6, MBP MacBookPro11,2, 16 GB RAM. 20 Gb/s Thunderbolt.
Using AJA on a RAID 0 ThunderBay Mini with 4 480 GB OWC Extreme 6G SSDs,
using the same configuration reported here
(https://www.softraid.com/pages/features/raid_levels.html), I'm seeing this
performance when using Sweep File Sizes on 720x486 8 bit, disable file
system cache:
Write: 380.3 MB/s
Read: 806.8 MB/s
This is bad. The writes are < than the writes to my internal SSD. The
reads are not even double the internal Apple SSD and this is with 4 SSDs in
a RAID 0.
My goal is to use the RAID for faster Xcode builds.
I'm holding judgement on my review until I can see if I can get CLOSE to the
speeds that are advertised for the Mac Pro on the RAID Levels page here
(https://www.softraid.com/pages/features/raid_levels.html).
Any advice? Thanks.

Alex Zavatone
January 2017

SoftRAID replies: We work hard to solve each of the problems our
users are experiencing. As an example of this, we contacted Alex
repeatedly to figure out why he might be experiencing unusual problems with read/write speeds. We wanted to work with him, and give him the advice he asked for. However, despite our efforts, Alex never followed up with us.

As a professional photographer and publisher of the forthcoming book THE SPIRIT OF TEA, the integrity of my data is paramount. The best hardware in the world is of no use if the software itself is not reliable.

I have been using SoftRAID since 2008 and have found it to be of the absolute highest quality. Not only is the software itself of the highest calibre, but the technical support is the BEST I have ever experienced. (I should add that my experiences with technical support had more to do with faulty drives on my end, rather than problems with SoftRAID)

I HIGHLY RECOMMEND entrusting your valuable data to SoftRAID. It is just as fast as any hardware RAID I have used, more flexible, and offers many features such as disk certification, which are missing in the hardware RAID solutions I have used.

Matthew London
Tiger Spring Press / THE SPIRIT OF TEAspiritoftea.net
January 2017

I have a Snow Leopard server that runs applications that don't work
on more modern systems. It's a great system and having the boot drive run on
a SoftRAID 5 mirrored volume gives me peace of mind. When I had some unusual
configuration issues, SoftRAID's tech support was right there with a
solution.

SoftRAID is a must for everyone who takes their data seriously.

Joshua Schwarz
January 2017

Mark James goes above and beyond anything I've ever seen in the world of customer service. This is a
man dedicated to helping people in need and who obviously stands behind his product 100%. When I lost data, I thought for sure I would be talking to a shadowy customer service rep, clueless and just waiting to pass me off to someone else and keep the circle going until I gave up. Nope. I email in, and Mark got back to me ASAP even while in Europe. Unreal.

I cannot recommend Mark's company enough, you know you are in good hands!

Gregory
Hoffman
December 2016

Love it. However, it won't get 5 stars until it has RAID 6. I talked to someone there and they mentioned something in development that was better than RAID 6? Still waiting. Just had 2 drives on my scratch space RAID 5 fail in a single day, a week out from a conference. Sort of hosed. Realize I could use another configuration, but it's scratch space. A 2nd fail drive would really be sufficient. Can you guys crank out that next version?!!

Karl R
December 2016

SoftRAID replies: RAID 6 is coming, and it will include RAID 6 option. We're hoping to get it out by late 2017.

I've been using SR for a couple of years - even way back when it was version 4. I've been able to do things with it that hardware controllers can't do, and having fabulous results. I'm running it on macOS El Cap and it runs flawlessly.

Recently I had a situation where an enclosure wasn't behaving properly, and SR helped me trying to solve the problem. Unfortunately, I accidentally erased one of my RAIDS using SR (not SR's fault at all) - 12 TB of data. Yeah. Bummer. BUT, because of the wonder of SR, tech support was able to bring the data back with a button click. Amazing.

I wholeheartedly support SR for your RAID needs on Macintosh.

Mark Edward Lewis
Cinema Sound
November 2016

Hello SoftRAID Support,

After weeks of problems with our professional Camera Leica S-System, we now want to say thank you for your software and your tips about CF cards for cameras.

The Leica camera would freeze sometimes suddenly in the middle of a photo session. Leica support checked everything, including the firmware of the camera!! Then we checked all the CF cards (which seemed to work fine) with your certifying tool in SoftRAID 5.

Four of fifteen cards (not older than 3 months) had problems certifying after 5 minutes, "Multiple errors, replaced the card". So now everything works fine, incredible...

It is a must to certify before working as a professional, and not perhaps "when I have time for that".

Thanks a lot,

Jens Rosen
November 2016

I first used SoftRAID a
few years ago after the OSX Raid setup failed me.

I highly recommend SoftRAID if you don't ever, ever, ever want that OMG gulp
when you realise a drive has failed and hundreds, maybe thousands, of
hours/dollars has just evaporated.

I've been around PCs and video editing for decades, more 'patient trial
& error' than tech genius, and really appreciate the thought that these
folks put into the way their app works, and the support documentation—and,
when even their clear instructions have not quite been enough for me, their
genuinely helpful email support.

These are good people, this a a really good product.
I have complete trust that they have thought about, and tested absolutely
everything in what they do. Old school cool…

Jeremy Pollard
Best Story Wins Pty Ltd
October 2016

I would like to thank you for
your SoftRaid Software. The 30 day trial was awesome and gave me the time to
do the testing I needed. I discovered it worked so well on a macbook pro
running OS 10.6.8 that I purchased the full version. As Disk Utility did
not do RAID 5 your software solved my problems and allowed to me to create
the external RAID drive I was after.

Brian Lloyd
September 2016

SoftRAID is solid as a rock and the support behind it is PHENOMENAL. Mark has saved me more than once from situations that were not looking good. Thank you!

Danny Reams
August 2016

I have been using SoftRaid since version 2.x and have been happy with it. I am currently running 7 volumes in a mix of mirror and stripe, using 7 external hard drives and it all seems to work great. When anything goes wrong, tech-support is amazing. I have hard drives fail, and am able to recover from it without losing anything. The performance is good enough for my Video editing, and it seems to get more stable and more capable with each release. It has allowed me to deal with massive amounts of external storage for my MacMini.

Ken Fischer
August 2016

You have a great product and I am happy with the performance, features and reliability. The interface is especially well done. Some other utility companies (e.g, Acronis) have in recent years gone toward a flattened, ultra-simplified interface that is ultimately frustrating for experienced users. Your interface not only looks good but has a rational, intuitive design.

Thanks again for making this great product. I have tested the Thunderbay 4 with SoftRAID extensively against my Pegasus R4 with a hardware RAID controller, and the Thunderbay/SoftRAID approach is far better. The Promise Pegasus configuration software is convoluted. Re-striping the Pegasus disk takes forever, especially at smaller stripe sizes. Promise's support was very poor about this and they ultimately shipped me three different units to test. There was no actual problem just very slow RAID-5 syncing at 128KB and smaller stripe sizes, which was not documented. By contrast SoftRAID was so fast at first I thought it had malfunctioned :)

Joe Marler
July 2016

Had a sudden, strange problem with my Mac Pro - caused a re-start of the computer which kept re-starting over and over?? Narrowed it down to my RAID-5 with SoftRAID. Still not to the bottom of the problem yet but leaning toward a failed disk. Mark James was right on this within minutes of my 1st e-mail - stuck with me ALL day!! I don't know of any other software developer who would devote this kind of service! Thanks!!

Doug Knutson Windswept Productions
July 2016

SoftRAID Version 5 allowed me to successfully transfer my Apple RAID in Yosemite to El Capitan and upgrade the 4TB volumes to 6TB volumes utilizing the full new capacity of the volumes.

I am very pleased with my upgrade from SoftRAID 4 to SoftRAID 5 that was required for El Capitan.

SoftRAID customer support was very responsive and knowledgeable in helping solve a disk directory corruption problem that initially prevented the volume transfer and upgrade process from happening. I have the utmost respect for their capabilities.

James Bodkin
July 2016

I've been using SoftRaid with my Thunderbay 4 RAID for nearly a year and it took me only took me a couple weeks to fall in love with it.

It has been completely reliable and surprisingly fast, all while using a negligible amount of CPU cycles. I've used SoftRaid on a slow, mid-2011 iMac, and now my new blazingly-fast 5K i7 4gHz iMac, and it never slowed down either machine. In fact, I've been known to play a first person shooter or two while waiting for SoftRaid to rebuild a volume and I've never noticed a performance hit.

I've lost power a couple times due to storms and ComEd, and each time my RAID volumes were rebuilt in, literally, seconds. Less than a minute. Rebuild times are so fast that the first couple times I thought, Surely this can't be right—there must be a problem because that was way too fast. I even contacted support thinking that something went wrong—that's how fast minor rebuilds are—and was assured that it really is that quick, and was working perfectly. Nice.

In less than a year SoftRaid has predicted failures of two drives, one 3TB Toshiba in my main RAID 5, and one 4TB HGST in my Time Machine RAID 5. The former failed the next day, the latter, a couple weeks later. Once they totally failed, SoftRaid kept my 4-disk volumes humming along until I was able to hot swap them out in no time.

Replacing each drive couldn't have been simpler. After removing the bad drives and replacing with fresh, certified drives (certified through SoftRaid to ensure reliability and map out bad sectors, if any) without powering down, both HUGE volumes were rebuilt in a few hours without issue—like nothing even happened.

But the best thing about SoftRaid is the timely and thorough customer service. This was my first RAID system, and although I'm pretty good with Macs I was clueless when it came to multiple-disk volumes. The folks at SoftRaid patiently answered all of my initial dumb questions and explained everything to me in a way I could understand. It's because of this prompt, helpful support that I'm now a loyal SoftRaid user and customer.

I love SoftRaid!

Steve Krason
July 2016

SoftRAID is fantastic robust software. Setting up and rebuilding (when a drive fails) is straight forward with the intuitive GUI.

Henri Shustak Lucid Information Systems
June 2016

I went with this software with my fanless G Dives instead of going with a Synology NAS for a mirror volume for my music system. Being new to setting up a RAID system I needed support. Boy did I need support. I got constant errors and after a few emails the support contact by the name of James suggested the errors were coming from the FW800 chipset. He was correct, because when I switched to USB3 all the errors went bye-bye...good call!

Service? I thought Apple was the best but this guy named King James put a new meaning to the word "SUPPORT".
What a great company and what a great product. I've had a power drop out from a wallwart for one of my G Drives and the RAID system did what it was supposed to do. Thank you King James and the code writers behind the product. LeBron who?

Rick Breitstein June 2016

I love the product. Best product is the one that just works and keeps on working without a glitch! SoftRAID excels the part and thats just one part of it. Equally important is the support and service.

Last year, I had sent a question regarding disabling auto-mount for certain boot drives. At that point I got a immediate reply from Mark James that they are sorry that they don't have this feature at the moment.

Nine months later, I get an email back saying that they have now found a solution and the link to it. Wow! I have never experienced such excellent followup and customer care ever before. Kudos to the SoftRAID Support team!

Thank you very much SoftRAID team :-)

Rajiv Saini June 2016

SoftRAID is a great tool and has offered continuous support of the Mac community since the beginning. Now with SoftRAID 5, they offer a modern RAID format that can extend the useful life of an old Mac Pro and leverage Thunderbolt enclosures for fast storage. Their support is excellent and has always been available when needed. Highly recommended from a 12-year veteran Apple Consultant!

Joe Saponare PsiMac LLC
May 2016

The tech support at SoftRAID was extremely helpful at repairing my Thunderbay 4 RAID when a transfer issue caused it to crash. All my data was recovered successfully.

Travis Diesing
May 2016

After updating SoftRAID to version 5.5, installing a new driver on a cloned volume "hung". I E-Mailed technical support (from New Zealand) and within minutes had an E-Mail from James. Over the course of an hour or two we communicated and between the two of us rectified the problem.

I can only say that SoftRAID are in the very top echelon of customer support and their software, together with its constant updates and improvements are worth much more than the purchase price.

If only the company that we love and respect could be the same....................(sigh)

Desmond Foulger Darcom Holdings Ltd. trading as Service West
April 2016

Mark, as usual, you never sleep. :-)

Thanks,
Larry Jordan

Larry Jordan
http://larryjordan.com
March 2016

As a photographer and publisher I trust SoftRAID for my life's work. The software allows me to test my drives before using them, and then warns me of impending issues long before they become a problem. When I need to swap a drive, it tells me how long the rebuild will take. Extremely flexible and easy to use.

The feature set is fantastic, but even better is their tech support. Having run a software company myself and having submitted tons of support requests over the last two decades Mark James gets the award for being the FASTEST and BEST tech support person I've ever had the pleasure to work with.

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED !!!!

Matthew London
March 2016

I want to add my voice of appreciation and admiration for the support provided by Mark James of SoftRAID. I have a new Thunderbay 4 system, and Mark has been incredibly responsive and helpful as I've worked through some issues. Most of these issues have been due to my lack of understanding or knowledge, and only a few had to do with hardware or software problems.

Mark is extremely knowledgable, and works very hard to ensure customer satisfaction. He must work nearly 24x7, as I've never had to wait too long for a response to an email query. I spent years in the software industry and I know how difficult it is to provide the kind of support that Mark has consistently provided.

I think the SoftRAID software is also outstanding. It's FAST and RELIABLE, and easy to use, and has great features (e.g., progress monitoring, safeguard, helpful features like disk labeling and drive blinking). My only concern really is the noise coming from the Thunderbay 4. It's not the fan, but the nearly constant "gurgling" of the disks as the heads seek around. I don't think we have a solution yet, but Mark is doing all he can!

Kudos and thanks, Mark, and the entire SoftRAID team!

Ken Jacobs
February 2016

Happily using the software in a 4 HD storage unit for Autodesk smoke video editing.
Awesome software, was using for couple of months in a raid 5 configuration, suddenly an HD was starting to show a minor issue - luckily the software gave a warning and I was able to replace it and rebuild the media easily, and the media was all there without any issue.
Normally a tragic experience was surprisingly good one.

Cesar Mion
February 2016

Exceptionally prompt and very clear/precise answers to issues makes the Support team an A+ operation. The software is also very, very efficient with an intuitive interface. Overall, a classy operation.
-DM

Dennis Miller
Northeastern University
February 2016

Hi There

I am using SoftRAID ver 5.1 with an OWC ThunderBay 4. So far, so good. RAID is stable and working well. I only have one urgent feature request. I am director/editor for broadcast/corporate/non-profit films. For some types of work, I need to spin down the RAID controlled by SoftRAID. I am on an iMac running Mac OS 10.10. Currently I do this by unmounting the raid drive and then unplugging the Thunderbolt cable. The drive itself is not in an easy to reach location.

Would you please add a software command/switch on the SoftRaid monitor to unmount and then spin down the RAID.

Thanks,
Vance

Vance Tschritter
January 2016

After using SoftRAID for many, many years. I had an occasion to contact support. I had a server crashing/rebooting upon what seemed to be completion of a SoftRAID mirror rebuild. I mistakenly suspected it was SoftRAID. I contacted Support to inquire the latest version that would work with our hardware. I was replied to by Mark James (with whom I discovered, while looking up previous licenses, I'd communicated with back in 2009).

Mark suggested several things, all of which were completely wrong - because in the end it wasn't SoftRAID at all but a glitchy server power supply that was dipping below threshold! SoftRAID was merely doing it's job rebuilding after the unexpected reboot and getting things in order before the next unexpected reboot.

In this one-and-only support instance in 15+ years of using the product, I was sincerely appreciative of the numerous suggestions and helpful attitude Mark had. In the end I felt completely ashamed to have suspected a product that had worked flawlessly for me in many installations for so long.

This is a great product, and in the event you ever need support, you'll find they're great too.

Thanks SoftRAID, thanks Mark!

Sincerely,
Henry

Henry Coello
January 2016

Although I purchased SoftRAID Lite, I hesitated to install it until I got further explanations of some of the warnings in the release notes. So this review is not actually about the software but about the outstanding tech support I received from Mark James. His replies were nearly instantaneous, clearly written, and, thankfully, entirely complete. He stayed with me until the problem was resolved to my satisfaction. The quality of tech support is, sadly, exquisitely rare in this day and age. Finding it here, so early in my experience with SoftRAID, has made me a loyal customer.

Ron Miller
December 2015

I bought a ThunderBay 4 device one week ago and try SoftRAID to use it in my MacBook Pro, after 5 installations I couldn't use it, I sent an email to the costumer service, Mark was the person who answers me, all I can say is that he was very quickly, helpful, and always ready to collaborate. Finally he with a engineer could solve my problem.

Very happy with the costumer service, and specially with Mark.

Well done!

Miguel Pastor
December 2015

Thank you for your swift answer. On a Saturday ! That's what one calls great support.

Kind Regards,
Bruno van Branden
December 2015

So I upgraded to El Capitan without even really thinking about SoftRAID. Unfortunately, I upgraded a bit quick.

Thankfully, when I reach out to them on a Friday evening, I suspected that I would not hear back until at least Monday. But literally, a few minutes later, they had already responded.

They efficiently helped me sort out the problem. And I was back up and running quickly.

I am really grateful for service like this, especially in this day and age when it seems like nobody wants to give it and when they do, it's often wrong.

So thanks guys. You really saved the day for me.

Ken Vanegas
November 2015

Solid product backed by stellar tech support. Mark helped me figure out a problem that wasn't even related to SoftRAID and got me back up and running. Thank you!

Danny Reams
November 2015

I have used SoftRAID in every Mac I have owned in the past few years, so long as that Mac will hold two drives. It is the best and most cost-effective backup strategy available. SoftRAID has gotten better every time it has been revised.

We also strongly recommend it to our small business clients who have Mac servers.

George Bigham
Bigham Technology Solutions, Inc.
November 2015

Since Apple removed RAID function in Disk Utility in El Captan I looked for other option. Then I found SoftRaid 5.1 and bought it. I must say this is one of the best investment I have made. I rely heavily on RAID for my video editing. So simple to use, so powerful, so many useful options.

Apple may implement RAID function sometimes in the future, I do not care, I will stay with this great software for ever.

Finnur Bárðarson
November 2015

Our introduction to SoftRAID came through our purchase of the OWC ThunderBay 4 RAID. Their recommendations (which we have found to be extremely reliable over the years) for the performance and customization capabilities of a software RAID vs. a system with only hardware RAID was so compelling we purchased both the hardware and the accompanying SoftRAID.

Besides the flexibility and speed offered, my attention was drawn to the additional benefits the software offered – keeping data safe. Our office had been experiencing hard drive failures on a nearly back-to-back basis. More time was needed to keep data safely shuffled to non-failing drives than was being spent our real job, graphic design and photography. Not only was the bottom line suffering, but I was losing faith in all the major hard drive manufacturers. Not only were brand new drives failing after they'd been installed, but so were the refurbished drives sent by the factory to replace them.

Completely fed-up playing catch-up to dying drives, I needed a pro-active approach. "Can't we find out which drives are reliable BEFORE we bring them online?" SoftRAID to the rescue. From that point on, with every single drive in our office – new and used – we put them to the test with SoftRAID's "Certify Disk" feature. This easy-to-use process is so comprehensive that it takes nearly forever to run, especially on large capacity hard drives. But it is so worth it.

Our first diagnostic was to test five newly purchased (refurbished) drives that would eventually fill the ThunderBay 4, with a spare drive in reserve. I was amazed when three of the five drives FAILED the certification process. How could a hard drive manufacturer put these drives out there knowing they would fail? With no questions asked when we requested an RMA, I believe we got our answer. Perhaps that failure rate is built into their marketing plan. But not on my watch! Finally we had taken charge of our hard drive destiny, even if only for the moment. Anything can happen to a drive at any time. But, it feels really good to have the tools that reveal hard drive deficiencies before they become catastrophic problems.

I highly recommend SoftRAID. The SoftRAID Monitor now runs silently in the background, constantly monitoring the status of all my SoftRAID disks and volumes. It displays a dialog whenever an error or event occurs, so I know at a glance when any of my drives even begins to have an issue. All our hard work creating digital assets will not be lost.

Did I mention that their tech support and follow-up it also top notch? Rest assured, it is.

Erick Wand
Graphics by Erick / image750 Photography
October 2015

I had 4 new 6TB NAS HDDs that I installed into a ThunderBay 4 enclosure. Following the installation steps I initialized the drives using the SoftRAID software. Then saw I was supposed to run the "certify" option. Knowing that with the size of the drives this would take several days to run I really REALLY didn't want to do that. After the initialization the drives seemed ready to use in the RAID config.

So I reviewed the FAQ and contacted support. Both of them highly recommended to always "certify" the HDD before use. Forcing myself to remember that a few days of scanning might save me from a failed drive nightmare I reluctantly started the certification process. Once started, the time remaining of the "certify" displayed 90+ hours... I thought I had possibly made the wrong choice...

The next day 1 of those 4 drives had failed the certification on account of multiple bad sectors found in the process. WOW! I will never use another new HDD again before running this scan on it! It's like a time machine, informing me of future disasters before they happen. Best part is that no data had been copied to the drive yet and I returned it to the manufacturer for a replacement noting the log from the SoftRAID software.

THANK YOU THANK YOU!! Great support and invaluable software for those that depend on working drives for their livelihood!

Nathan Pickett
NP Films
October 2015

I love the software…I was cleaning around my computer yesterday and accidentally unplugged one of the thunderbolt cables. The software detected it, alerted me, I plugged it back in, and in seconds everything was re-synchronized in my mirror (0+1). I did the same thing before when I was using Apples software mirroring…it took 4 days to re-sync my 16 TB Pegasus 2 R4's.

I definitely sleep better knowing I'm using your software.

Today I am working on my friends computer and decided to purchase another copy of SoftRAID to install on his system too.

Mark Quin
September 2015

SoftRAID the program and the accompanying support are top notch. The software is fast, easy to use, and powerful. In fact it's likely that using SoftRAID on a modern machine provides faster RAID 5 storage than using a hardware RAID device attached to the same machine.

The support team is equally fast, providing helpful guidance on configuration issues and for problem debugging. Highly recommended.

Peter Galvin
Galvin Enterprises
August 2015

I recently used SoftRAID 5 to certify two 4TB hard drives. Each 4-pass certification took about 3.5 days using eSATA.

Yes the certification takes a long time but I have identified hard drives as bad before trusting them for backups or any other purpose.

This feature of SoftRAID is worth the cost of the software alone.

David McLaughlin
August 2015

As a content creator, SOFTRAID is the foundation first step with ANY hard drive I use. Not Disk Utility - SOFTRAID. I'm a producer and finishing editor. I'm also demanding of my equipment and the technology powering it.

If you're like me you've spent time on chats with Adobe or Apple or Nvidia or AJA repeating your problems 10x before you get to someone that *might* be able to help. With SOFTRAID, you get a technical solution AND you get full support behind it.

I had a MAJOR issue late on a Sunday night ahead of an early Monday -- RAID volumes wouldn't mount. Immediate technical support had me back online in less than 30 minutes -- 25 of which were spent on my end. SOFTRAID BACKS UP THEIR PRODUCT WITH IMMEDIATE SUPPORT AND RESPONSE. They made my crisis their crisis and solved it as quickly and as painlessly as possible.

If you've spent time repeatedly describing your technical scenarios and problems to people, when a company gives you the immediate and effect support they promise you know it has value beyond the cost of the product. Time was saved, money was saved and my problems were solved because my problems mattered.

I cannot rave about the support enough.

Many thanks to the SOFTRAID team.

Rob Henry
INTERSECTION
July 2015

I am a new user, so I cannot say too much about the software yet. So far, I am impressed.

What I CAN say is that the customer service is superb! I am a relatively high-end user, which basically means that I have just enough knowledge to be dangerous, I am a demanding consumer, and I ask a lot of questions.

The people at SoftRAID responded to my e-mails very quickly, and answered all of my questions, sometimes within minutes! I am pretty excited about using SoftRAID 5 as part of my disk management routine.

Mark Tomaras
Mark Tomaras Photography
July 2015

RAID. Terrified. Completely. RAID 0-5.. I do video, audio and just about live 24/7 on my Mac Pro (yeah, total loser) :) Rather not have to worry about drive health and losing months of work.

SoftRAID rocks. Can't say enough good things about it. Anyone of you that does video out there knows that you could have 1,000 TB of HD space and within a few months, poof. Gone. I honestly thought RAID setups had to be done via hardware etc etc etc. Then I was made aware of SoftRAID. Easy. Initialize drives, verify integrity and create volume. Done.

I even emailed their sales guy for a question about the software and adding another drive array. Then the unthinkable happened. I got a reply!!! and it wasn't from a bot!! real person! Great product, great response time and support. Piece of mind and worry free usage. Amazing.

thumbs up gang!

Outstanding work, gang.

Pali Kaaihue
DGTV
May 2015

Not only is the SoftRaid software easy to use and so stable you can have near-perfect faith in your system, but the support team (Mark) is fast on the draw and helps you work through any problem without pointing fingers or making you feel like an idiot.

If only the world was populated with more companies like this one. Oh, well. If wishes were horses, all beggars would ride.
Outstanding work, gang.

Fabled Santa
Fabled Santa Industries
May 2015

My RAID was having an issue with DaVinci Resolve. It ended up being my OS, but the technician at SoftRAID wouldn't rest until the problem was solved. That level of customer service is appreciated, and unmatched by any other company I've worked with.

Outstanding work, gang.

Aaron Picot
May 2015

Fast, professional and successful support in restoring a ThunderBay 4 unit with drive failure. If that was not enough, this all happened over a weekend where (at least in my home country Germany) most end customers would not even reach support.

I was a happy customer using the SoftRaid software before the crash. With this experience I am more convinced than ever to have chosen the right company.

Thanks to the support team again.

Sven Zumkley
May 2015

My use of the software is still relatively recent. However, the software is intuitive and allowed me to create a RAID5 volume which OS X will not do with its built in RAID.

More importantly I want to mention how excellent technical support is. I had an error on my Mac initially when working with SoftRAID5 and a new enclosure I bought (four disks) to be used as a large volume. The setup with SoftRAID was extremely simple (without even reading the manual). Once the volume was setup I configured my Time Machine to backup to it and triggered a backup. Not too long into that backup a drive disappeared (even OS X didn't see it), however, the drive continued along with SoftRAID displaying the error message and turning it's icon to an alert color. Eventually I would return to find my Mac at the login screen and realize that it had a kernel panic and rebooted.

After reading through the softRAID logs it looked like it might be a disk issue (made sense since there were 3 others working fine). I RMA's the disk and got the new one in. Replaced it. Same thing. I got in contact with Tech Support at SoftRAID and got an immediate response. I was asked to try some troubleshooting and the tech basically identified it as an enclosure problem (although he did bring the ticket to other's attention at the company to see if he was missing something). In the meantime, I was able to reference the ticket at SoftRAID with the manufacturer of the enclosure and it helped speed the process of getting that device RMA'd.

In the end it was the device as I had the new one hooked up for over a week without any disk dropouts OR kernel panics in OS X.

Also, since I had installed/uninstalled the softRAID5 driver at least 20 times or so it's good to know that it kept all of my data intact through this entire process. On the new enclosure it just resync'd the out of sync drive (the one that dropped of the bus previously) and everything was good to go.

David Modoski
May 2015

SoftRAID's SMART tests and other predictive tests have accurately notified me of pending failures in many file servers, allowing me to schedule and minimize downtime of the server. SoftRAID enables me to head off an emergency and turn it into simple routine maintenance. I insist that my clients use SoftRAID on their servers and other mission critical machines.

SoftRAID's tech support is superb, helping me to understand a problem I was seeing with a server that I had not yet put into production, enabling me to get an in-warranty replacement from the drive manufacturer. Their sales support resolved a problem I had with an upgrade purchase within one hour of reporting the problem.

Jeff Bagby
Sirius Mac Solutions, LLC
May 2015

What I like about SoftRAID is the organized way I can create mirrored backups of my operating system and datasets. I can take the primary drive with me to work, get back to my home office, and have the secondary drives rebuilt automatically when I plug them back in. I never lose work, I always have redundancy, I can always rebuild my operating system immediately is something blows up. I'm always ready to "go to work" with my data and projects in tact. i LOVE that.

I managed to get myself into a bind with my SoftRAID mirrored drives when I moved up to Yosemite and updated to SoftRAID 5.0.7. My system backups became unbootable. The crux was, I didn't get it together to update the drivers in SoftRAID for my volumes when I updated the software. I went through various gymnastics, including changing my mirror volumes to non-Raid volumes trying to figure it. Once, I got the volume drivers installed, my system backups were bootable, but at that point they were non-RAID volumes; all my mirrors were broken.

I tried to revert back to 4.5.4 so that I could convert the non-raids back to mirrors, and feeling rather hopeless because it wouldn't work, I finally emailed tech support. I got a response within about 20 minutes telling me that 4.5.4 wouldn't work with Yosemite, hence my failure; and that 5.0.7 had not developed the "convert to mirror" tool. I was asked to generate and email a report from the SoftRAID software (which I consider a very powerful tool provided by SoftRAID for tech support analysis).

The email dialog continued throughout the weekend as Mark James sorted out my problem for me. On Sunday, he emailed me a script with instructions on how to run it. I did that, rebooted, and was delighted to be done--just like THAT!! I have to add that I loved the various quotes below the signature line of my support emails. They had a way of pointing out the bigger picture. . .for example, "you can complain because roses have thorns, or you can rejoice because roses have thorns". A sort of SoftRAID zen, making me rejoice in good tech support.

My feeling is that any software is only as good as its tech support. When you have a problem and contact tech support, receive immediate response with good answers, you've got the right software. That's what I think about SoftRAID.

My experiences with this setup was initially very good. I then had a problem caused by the OS X 10.10.2 Thunderbolt driver, but it was a known Apple problem which was fixed with 10.10.3. Reporting this, I got immediately response.

I then had a strange problem with my menu bar, which acted up when I mounted the RAID drive. OWC reacted again immediately to my help request, but had to send me on to SoftRAID for further diagnosis. I received swift follow-up from them, and based on their feed-backs I was able to isolate and correct the problem – which turned out to be related to the computer (iStat Menus' 'Disks' panel), not their software nor the OWC hardware.

I'm quite impressed with both OWC's and SoftRAID's handling of my support requests. Using this unit in a production environment, it's essential to receive technical support when needed. I'm happy to share my good experiences, as well as to recommend this solution.

My scratch space is large though, I would prefer RAID6 for more protection (2 parity blocks instead of 1). Will give this 5 stars when RAID 6 is added.

Karl Rittger
CU Boulder
April 2015

I've been using SoftRAID since version 3.5. This is arguably the best MAC drive management software out there. I typically run 20 external hard drives connected through an eSATA PCIe card. This software allows me to manage all the drives in various configurations (RAID 0, 1+0, 5) and monitors their performance.

But the real advantage is the support. Mark in support has been my "go to" guy when I have a problem...and not just with SoftRAID. I mean he knows third-party hardware and software, and the invariably quirky MAC OS releases. The guy must never sleep--I get e-mail responses at 3 am. (I'm convinced he wrote the program....)

Anyway, if you have a MAC and you use a number of drives, my opinion is SoftRAID is the way to go.

Michael Oates
302 Stories, inc.
April 2015

With a 4-drive enclosure - I created a RAID 0 volume and a volume with RAID 5.

RAID 0 gave me the same speeds as the internal PCI SSD on the 2013 Mac Pro. Over 700 MB/sec.

The support is amazing. Emails back within minutes....

Matthew Whitworth
Overcoast
April 2015

Thank you. Very helpful info and your super-fast tech help response was amazing.

I am so impressed with everything to do with SoftRAID. Nice work!

Geoff G
April 2015

I had some trouble with a new drive and was not sure if it was me, the drive or the software.

Mark at SoftRAID was able to walk me through trouble shooting and was very thorough. He made sure everything was perfect before we were finished. I was impressed with his knowledge and patience.

I've already recommended to several people.

Casey Sherrier
Home By Sunset
March 2015

SoftRAID has amazing support and customer service!! Prompt, helpful and they go the extra mile. HIGHLY recommend!!

Liam Shy
Liam Shy Design
March 2015

I was introduced to SoftRAID through OWC's ThunderBay and liked it so much I decided to use it to set up a RAID array on a server at work. However the drives that were installed there proved to be difficult.

Mark from SoftRAID's customer support team, not only kept me from smashing them, but got the whole mess to work. A+ softRaid, you sweethearts!

Ross Connard
Wordsmith Advertising
March 2015

Excellent software for RAID management in OS X. Used version 2 in the past and could not boot from the drives. With latest version I can and I can only recommend it.

For the past five years we have used SoftRAID at our law office, where data reliability is crucial not only to our business, but also to the thousands of clients who depend on us for their legal needs. During that time SoftRAID has never let us down. It is easy to use, it warns us BEFORE failures occur, rebuilds are lighting fast, and on the few occasions when we have needed tech support the service has been both fast and helpful. SoftRAID has my enthusiastic endorsement.

Burk Roberts
Roberts & Roberts, LLP
February 2015

I've been using SoftRAID 5 for a few months and I'm really very happy with it. I'd had a few questions for the SoftRAID developers over this time (mostly due to my inexperience with RAID in general), and I've had responses back via email in as little as 3-4 minutes after sending them. Just astonishing service, really. The software itself is very robust, has built-in S.M.A.R.T status, and you can set it to email you if with alerts if there are any issues with your RAID, or if your computer reboots for some reason etc. The software is a doddle to use, and setting up RAID 0, RAID 1 or RAID 5 takes just seconds. I've tested extensively what happens in a failure (by yanking a disk out!), and SoftRAID is graceful about how it deals with it.

While testing RAID 1, for example, I discovered it's very quick about rebuilding when a drive "fails" and is replaced. This is important on very large disks. For example, let's say you have a 10TB RAID 1 (2x 5TB). A lot of hardware RAID solutions will just copy the entire 5TB to the new second disk in the event of a failure, even if you've only actually used e.g. 50GB of space on the disk! SoftRAID doesn't do this. Instead, it analyses what has actually been taken up on the disk, and will resync just the 50GB of used space, not the entire 5TB. This is hugely time-saving in the event of a failure.

Highly recommended.

William Grose
January 2015

I'm still new to the software but I'm learning a lot about how drives work, RAID, and so-on. But most importantly, I wanted to review the support. SoftRAID has provided fantastic support and advice as I've been building my system, even responding to support requests on a Sunday!

I look forward to using the software more and knowing more about the state of my drives than I ever have in the past.

I move all the data off the predicted failing drive on to an external drive and ordered a new replace drive and carried on using my machine on using my machine as normal

my new drive turned up but i hadn't had the time to replace it 2 day ago the Failing drive.... died

i'm pretty impressed with that as now at least i feel i'm going to get a warning if a drive fails

the Raid 5 is solid and a rock and performs really well

one again great product and worth every penny just for monitoring let alone the raid

Gavin Nugent, United Kingdom
December 2014

Powerful and flexible, yet very easy to use. Excellent monitoring of the drives warned me of an impending failure.

Jon Lindemann
December 2014

I've been using SoftRAID since version 2, and it just keeps getting better. 5 is AMAZING!

But great software is nothing without support.

Recently while servicing 5 Mirrored RAID volumes for a commercial photographer client who was having hardware problems, I was on pins and needles, concerned about 2 years of data that wouldn't mount up. SoftRAID support responded to my emails several times throughout the day and saved my bacon!

I've never dealt with such committed and responsive support for any other software.

Michael Lamy
retouchMOJO
November 2014

You provide the best customer support in the business. :)

Bill Walster
November 2014

I would give you guys 10 stars if I could. Getting a real person responding to my email on Saturday night was a shocker. But your patient, ongoing problem solving that lasted late into the night was unbelievable.

You don't know how much it means to the technically challenged like me to have such accessible help. All my fears were taken care of so I could have a good night sleep and a wonderful Sunday.
I knew OWC provided top notch service and products, but I never knew anything about SoftRAID as a company. Well, now I know. Apple, OWC, and and now SoftRAID are the companies that have provide the best customer service I have ever had. But SoftRAID is the only one of these that would personally respond to an email late Saturday night! What other company does this? You are a geeks best friend! I feel bad for your wife/girlfriend!

Jeff Dean
September 2014

That was the fastest response from any Tech Support I have ever received … fantastic!

Howard Garrison
September 2014

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